The Fürth Repository

The Fürth Repository in Oberasbach Roßtal was the home of missing things. Missing things ended up in the Fürth Repository, small things and oversize things, long things and short things, half things and full things, they all ended up stowed away on a shelf in the Repository. Some missing things, things so battened with filth and perish they turned the stomach, were kept in a second repository where things were best left missing. The keeper of the Fürth Repository was Erazmova Stogova, a fine featured woman with long silken tresses and high angled cheekbones. She work Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and every second and third Saturday. Sundays she worked from home, compiling lists of things to do on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and every third Saturday; the second Saturday was reserved for pinochle and toss the die. She lived in a two-room walkup with a lapdog and a parakeet that was fluent in Esperanto and Urdu. On Wednesdays the parakeet rode the lapdog round and round the second room, filliping the yowling pup on with wire spurs attached to its birds’ feet. On Tuesday evenings after supper Erazmova Stogova read Sanskrit comic books borrowed from the keeper of the second repository, a slight man with runic features and a portly fondness for Erazmova Stogova’s long silken tresses and high angled cheekbones.